According to a new proposal, EPs would be eligible to
request for hardship exemption till October 1, 2011.
Next year, you may be subject to a one percent payment
adjustment on your Part B payments if you don't get onboard the e-prescribing
bandwagon in 2011. This payment adjustment will keep going up with each year -
1.5 percent in 2013 and 2 percent in 2014.
Exemption criteria too limited? Although the agency had laid
down that practitioners could evade the penalty, practitioners were not too
happy as they found the exemptions were too limited and did not include
realistic situations. Taking this into consideration, the agency has come up
with four more ways eligible professionals can avoid the penalty:
New proposal aims to exempt those who have just got their
technology in place or are getting it in position
The agency's new proposal will offer exemption to those
practitioners who have just got their technology in place or are in the process
of doing so as they may not have e-prescribed ten times within the first half
of the current year.
Physicians who prescribe narcotics or medications that
cannot be transmitted electronically will get a breather
Secondly, there are many physicians who prescribe narcotics.
Practices that prescribe large quantities of these drugs may find that they
cannot take the electronic way even if they wanted to participate in it.
Patients who do not need to prescribe medications for
several reasons are likely to get hardship exemption
Some practitioners seem like they're eligible for the
penalty because they carry out enough visits; however that may not be the
reality because chances are they may not prescribe medications for several
reasons. Keeping this in mind, the agency is proposing that the physicians and
other EPs be allowed to send a request for a hardship exemption.
Not enough opportunities to report the e-prescribing measure
owing to limitations in the measure's denominator
Sometimes it may so happen that a surgeon may prescribe
electronically but the prescriptions may not be associated with the kind of
visits that the e-prescribing measure's denominators include. The new proposal
comes to rescue of these physician.
